Lisa Eramo Cloning

In her article Is It Possible to Curtail Copy & Paste? Lisa Eramo (2017) discusses the prevalence of copy-and-paste documentation in electronic health records, along with its challenges and benefits, and strategies to prevent documentation errors. This article utilized qualitative methodologies to examine issues caused by cloning of electronic documentation in patient’s medical files, using examples from a report published by the ECRI institute and Patient Safety Organization (PSO). This special report evaluated 13 studies and based on the examination of the frequency of copy-and-pasting, it was found that the copying over of electronic documentation by health care professionals is alarmingly high. According to Eramo (2017), common issues associated with the copy-and-paste functionality in electronic documentation include the following: medication errors related to inaccurate documentation entries, decreased …show more content…
Eramo (2017) described several situations where patient safety was severely compromised, and some even resulted in death. In one instance, a patient who had presented to the emergency department with atrial fibrillation was discharged to his primary care physician, and the admitting physician copied the same assessment over twelve office visits over a 2-year period. Consequently, the patient died from a myocardial infarction and the physician was successfully sued. In another instance, a child was diagnosed with tuberculosis meningitis who had suffered significant deficits after weeks of office visits with copied documentation of negative TB exposure results, despite the child having recently traveled to a country where tuberculosis is endemic. Other examples of consequences include HIPAA violations associated with copied physician’s notes, legal ramifications from false documentation, and increased costs associated with duplication of